Breaking Down the Data Boom

If you can't take the heat, you're obviously not in the data center business. Yesterday's 2nd annual Bisnow Philadelphia Data Center Boom showed us Philly's strengths and weaknesses as a data market and how to (literally) cool down all of those high-energy facilities. (Hard to imagine that a month ago we were begging for more heat.)

PECO regional director Ed Piscopo delivered the opening remarks at The Rittenhouse to the crowd of 130. His mission: to beat the drum about the Greater Philly region's assets so we can retain talent that's already here and attract outside development. His sentiments were echoed by Comcast enterprise marketing director Tomas Yanez, who sat on our panel. Tomas says the data industry goes hand-in-hand with Comcast's goal of solidifying Philly as an East Coast tech hub, which he hopes the massive Comcast Innovation and Technology Center will help to catalyze. (Host a few Comic Cons and see what happens.)

What makes Philly attractive nationally? One-fifth of all Internet traffic flows through the New York-DC corridor, as The Data Centers CEO Gene Kern points out (left, we snapped him next to 365 Data Centers director of ops-East Rene Vazquez). Not only is Philly positioned almost midway between the two, its operating costs are much lower than theirs, which makes us a strong site for their primary and secondary centers. There are challenges, though, notes Rene, bringing an outsider’s perspective from Orlando. (Sobering analysis from the land of Disney.) While many Philly facilities have 2 kWh/rack capacity, he sees carriers asking for up to 10 kWh.

The city’s aging infrastructure also needs a lot of upkeep, says Penn IT senior director Donna Manley (snapped with Real Property Solutions prez John Smyth). On the other hand, Philly scores high in the area of disaster recovery as it’s less prone to severe weather-related outages. (You gotta take points however you get them.) Although the grid’s vulnerability concerns some, like Gene (who favors off-grid design for this reason), John says he isn’t losing sleep over it. From his experience—including managing centers at 1309 Buttonwood and 1500 Spring Garden—everyone today understands the necessity of redundancy. He and Donna also agree that compliance with local regulations (like the city's new benchmarking law) presents challenges while at the same time offers a boost to sustainable practices.

Indeed, up to 8% of all energy use nationally is consumed by data centers. Schneider Electric director Bryan Stevens (left, with Comcast’s Tomas Yanez) says that much inefficiency can be traced to carriers’ lack of knowledge of how energy works. (We admit we never paid much attention in physics class.)  Thankfully, data center orgs are beginning to hire energy managers and do assessments of their facilities. One issue Tomas raises is the lure of elasticity in the cloud; he recommends fiber-based services, like direct-connect Ethernet, for companies looking to scale themselves.

To be sure, data centers are a diminishing public sector priority, as our government panel rep attests. Delaware’s Department of Tech and Innovation COO Bill Hickox (center, with Steel ORCA COO Dennis Cronin and our moderator, eSite Systems principal Geoff Lawler) says that municipalities don’t have the funds to upgrade facilities or relocate to newer sites. The shift to cloud technology is the single biggest trend in government, and software-as-service solutions are the rage. On the horizon, Dennis sees cooling technologies changing: direct water cool processing is making a comeback, but will take some time to gain traction. (Remember, we all laughed when bell bottoms came back too.) He also predicts that colo sites will become more service-oriented to consumer needs.

We snapped PECO’s Ed Piscopo, Yanran Liu, Brandon Rose and Yvette Brown by their sponsor booth. PECO's push for data sites comes through its Smart Ideas programs, which include financial incentives for energy-efficient solutions, such as upgrades to lighting and HVAC equipment, or for data centers, row-oriented cooling and server virtualization. Another PECO incentive: free Phillies tickets to a lucky raffle winner, Ray Angelini VP Mark Gotlib. (We love free Phils games, but then we just end up splurging on the crab fries.)

Thanks to all of our sponsors, including Gordon Inc’s Craig Eychaner and Mark MacDougall, posing alongside two of their products: a containment hanger for cooling isolation and a structural ceiling grid.

Thanks to Xand senior exec Ken Makoid, who tells us that colo facilities are getting phenomenal traction, including at Xand's own facilities: the 125k SF Valley Forge Data Center and the 250k SF TekPark Data Center in the Lehigh Valley.